Gibson are ceasing development of Cakewalk and SONAR

Gibson Brands is ceasing development of Cakewalk branded products and with it, the popular DAW SONAR. Cakewalk was one of the first ever DAWs, originally developed for DOS as a MIDI sequencer in 1987, before growing into a popular workhorse recording software.

Their flagship DAW SONAR was at one point a key competitor to Logic, Pro Tools and Cubase, before falling away in recent years. Now Gibson, who acquired Cakewalk from Roland in 2013, have announced “The decision was made to better align with the company’s acquisition strategy that is heavily focused on growth in the global consumer electronics audio business under the Philips brand.”

SONAR users can expect the Cakewalk servers to continue to operate and their online assets will still be available, but the monthly updates will cease to be delivered. If you’re looking for a new DAW, Ableton’s recently released Live 10 could be for you, or perhaps another legacy DAW – now upgraded to Cubase 9.5 – will be the easiest transition.